


this unholy mess inside

by rynleaf



Series: sxx configurations [1]
Category: RYC | Reverse Yi City - kevinkevinson, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Genre: (not really hate sex), Explicit Sexual Content, Hate Sex, M/M, Modern AU, Past life trauma, Reincarnation, pre-songxuexiao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:33:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23860867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rynleaf/pseuds/rynleaf
Summary: What the hell are we doing,Song Lan signs frantically. He rubs his face then signs something that could either be ‘fuck me,’ or ‘we’re fucked,’ Xue Yang doesn’t know. His syntax has never been great and neither has his self-preservation instinct because the next thing that comes out of his mouth, half in anger and half as a desperate attempt to steer this conversation in literallyanyother direction, is this:“You know you only have to ask if you wanna fuck, Song Lan.”It’s a mistake. He knows. He knows. But Song Lan’s wide-eyed disbelief also fills him with an irrational sense of satisfaction and he has to push, he has to push it all the way, cocking his hips and looking up at Song Lan through his eyelashes and licking his lips in the dirtiest way he knows how: go big or go home, one of his foster mothers always said. Might as well dig himself all the way in and getcomfortable.-In which Song Lan and Xue Yang both experience feelings they would rather avoid.
Relationships: Sòng Lán | Sòng Zǐchēn/Xuē Yáng | Xuē Chéngměi
Series: sxx configurations [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719778
Comments: 26
Kudos: 357





	this unholy mess inside

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kevinkevinson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kevinkevinson/gifts).



> so [Casey](https://twitter.com/kevinkevinsonnn) made the mistake of giving me their 150~ page fic doc for their [modern AU](https://twitter.com/kevinkevinsonnn/status/1238209485824503808?s=20) and I saw this scene and I NEEDED to remix it because, well. 
> 
> A bunch of dialogues and scene stuff is taken from the fic doc. Thank you Casey for letting me have fun with this, Mills for making me split apart my 10-row-long sentences and the groupchat for the yelling <3

  
  


__

  
  


Xue Yang thinks about it, sometimes. This week it’s especially hard not to, alone in his shitty ass apartment in this shitty ass city with his shitty ass finger the way it is, everything clattering around in his head in a jumble as he hangs off the edge of his bed upside-down. Song Lan, Xiao Xingchen, a-Qing. Yi City is barely more than a collection of sour smelling nightmares and half-uncovered memories shrieking in the back of his brain. 

It’s enough to drive a man crazy. It’s enough that he has to cover his face with his hands and scream into his palms, frustrated and alone and  _ angry  _ about it. 

Fuck Song Lan. Fuck chance reincarnation. Fuck the taste of regret in the back of his throat and the tight feeling in his chest when he thinks about Song Lan smiling that lopsided little smile at him over the rim of his coffee mug.

And the kisses. 

And Song Lan’s square, big-knuckled fingers around his own, begrudging, concerned. __

Jesus. What bullshit. 

Xue Yang slithers off his bed to lie on the floor, face half-jammed under his bed and his legs stretched out far enough to hang out into the hallway. From this vantage point he can see the single broken bed slat by the foot of his hand-me-down bedframe. It’s dusty down here. Tucked all the way to the back is a book smeared half-open and creased between the edge of his mattress and the wall. 

Xue Yang fishes it out. 

It’s a first year Physics textbook. The library stamp on the inner front cover is faded and the book is weathered by the leftover marks of countless students before him, neon pink highlighter and doodles of dicks on the margins and an elaborate diagram of the human heart on the back page—Xue Yang’s very own contribution. It’s a masterpiece. Xue Yang grins and reaches up blindly to grab the pair of scissors from his desk. He then proceeds to methodically remove each page from chapter five. 

He’s halfway through page 146 when he hears the sound of a key turning in the lock, the echo of stomping footsteps and a bang when his much-abused front door is slammed shut with enough force to make fine dust fall from the ceiling onto Xue Yang’s bedsheets. 

“Hey!” Xue Yang pokes his head out his bedroom door, glaring at Song Lan, “What the fuck did I say about property damage?”

Song Lan doesn’t turn around. He yanks his shoes off and shoves them to the side, which in itself is a bad sign—Song Lan is radiating stress, zipping his jacket open with jerky motions and discarding it on top of his shoes with an exaggerated shove. Xue Yang scoots up to his feet and follows Song Lan as he stomps into Xue Yang’s minuscule kitchen, fishes a glass out of the cupboard and holds it under the cold water tap. 

“What’s going on?” Xue Yang asks. 

He expects to have to fight for it. Getting the truth out of Song Lan is like pulling teeth sometimes—he keeps his secrets precious and close which is annoying at the best of times and infuriating at the worst; like that one notable occasion when Song Lan kept the story of his fucking  _ undeath _ and this bullshit reincarnation business a secret for six months and made  _ friends  _ with Xue Yang for reasons he, to this day, can’t really wrap his head around. 

He gets a bad startle when Song Lan whips around and glares, slamming his full glass on the counter hard enough that water spills over the rim. 

“Jesus fuck, man,” Xue Yang says. Song Lan closes his eyes and tips his head back with a frustrated huff of breath.

_ A-Qing,  _ he signs with furious intensity,  _ remembers. _

Xue Yang drops his book.

“What?!” 

Song Lan rakes his fingers through his hair with a groan and pushes past Xue Yang toward the bedroom as if he cannot bear to stay still, to be in the same room as him. It stings. Xue Yang tries not to think about it too hard, tries to avoid acknowledging the mounting sense of loss and fear and panic that twists his stomach into knots around nothing. 

Guilt is a very unsexy emotion, Xue Yang thinks, digging his fingernails into his own palms as he tries to shake off the weird, cross-eyed double vision thing that keeps laying the image of grad student a-Qing over the image of a corpse, eyeless in the dirt. 

Fuck.

He doesn’t know what to do with any of this. He doesn’t know what to do with Song Lan either, angry like he hasn’t seen him since Yi City and that is a memory Xue Yang would rather not re-visit, thank you very much. Things are fucked up enough as they are, and now that a-Qing remembers...

Xue Yang stomps after Song Lan.

“Wait a minute. Hey! Did she talk to you? Did you talk to her? What did she tell Xingchen? Song Lan!”

Song Lan catches himself on the bedroom door frame. His shoulders are shaking. 

“Come on,” Xue Yang coaxes, stepping closer, “come on, talk to me!”

Song Lan turns and signs ‘no,’ then something that might say ‘oblivious’ and Xingchen’s name, and some more things Xue Yang cannot decipher but look jerky and angry and at total odds with Song Lan’s fucking tortured expression.

“Did she tell Xingchen,” he presses on. He needs to know, he needs to  _ know.  _ Xue Yang absolutely  _ isn’t  _ thinking about his unanswered texts and Xiao Xingchen’s silence. “Song  _ Lan!” _

Song Lan closes his eyes and shakes his head.

_ Jesus. _

“Then what the fuck are you this angry for?” Xue Yang demands, at once relieved and pissed off and worried anyway. Song Lan gives him a disbelieving look. 

“What?”

_ What the hell are we doing,  _ Song Lan signs frantically. He rubs his face then signs something that could either be ‘fuck me,’ or ‘we’re fucked,’ Xue Yang doesn’t know. His syntax has never been great and neither has his self-preservation instinct because the next thing that comes out of his mouth, half in anger and half as a desperate attempt to steer this conversation in literally any  _ other _ direction, is this:

“You know you only have to ask if you wanna fuck, Song Lan.” 

It’s a mistake. He knows. He  _ knows.  _ But Song Lan’s wide-eyed disbelief also fills him with an irrational sense of satisfaction and he has to push, he has to push it all the way, cocking his hips and looking up at Song Lan through his eyelashes and licking his lips in the dirtiest way he knows how: go big or go home, one of his foster mothers always said. Might as well dig himself all the way in and get  _ comfortable.  _

Song Lan slams his hand against the doorframe so hard, it splinters. 

_ Is this a joke to you?  _ He signs, furious, fast enough that Xue Yang can barely keep up.  _ Is everything a fucking joke to you? Do you not care about this at all, about him at all? About me? What the fuck are you doing?  _

“I don’t know!” Xue Yang shouts back. 

The moment is gone. The moment might never have been there in the first place, he thinks, and he can feel something inside him abruptly loosen: his grin slips, his breath catches in his throat, and he can’t stop thinking about how his two lives are parallel disasters and how Song Lan is the needle that pulls the connecting thread through. Xue Yang’s chest hurts. His throat hurts. His fucking  _ finger _ hurts. 

“Maybe everything  _ is  _ a joke to me! Maybe joking is the only way this whole… thing makes  _ sense  _ in my head, okay? This shitty life dumped on top of my  _ other _ shitty life, the fact that I fucking killed my two best friends like ten thousand years ago, that somehow you’re still  _ here, _ that Xingchen is fucking here.” Song Lan steps closer but Xue Yang dodges his hand as it reaches to touch him. “Maybe the only way how I deal with how… fucking unbearable it is, instead of fucking  _ killing myself, _ is to joke about it! Okay?”

Xue Yang pants angrily into the ensuing silence and bites his bottom lip hard enough to taste blood. 

Song Lan inhales, then deflates all at once. The pity on his face is fucking  _ insufferable. _

“Stop looking at me like that,” Xue Yang snaps and shoves him with his good hand. “Stop it! I don’t want your pity. I don’t want you taking care of me, I don’t—like—just—fuck  _ you, _ Song Lan, okay? Fuck you. I had enough.”

Song Lan catches his wrist before he can shove him again and Xue Yang glares up at him, resenting how stupidly tall he is, how much wider than him, how much stronger. Jesus. He tugs his arm but Song Lan doesn’t budge. 

“Let go,” he tugs again. “Let. My fucking arm. Go.”

Song Lan releases him abruptly mid-movement, and Xue Yang stumbles back. 

“Don’t touch me unless I tell you to. Jesus fuck,” he adds, acidic and mean, but they both know he doesn’t mean it. Xue Yang stands in the looming shadow of his best friend in the whole entire world, this entire life—maybe the past one too if he thinks about it hard enough, and isn’t  _ that  _ just fucking sad. 

“I hate this,” Xue Yang croaks. Song Lan sighs and gestures at his bandaged hand. 

_ Hurt?  _ He signs. 

Somehow,  _ somehow, _ that’s the final kick that deflates the bubble of Xue Yang’s nasty, filthy, brutal temper, the sense of burning, the vague desire to grab sharp things and stab them into soft ones, the impulse to kick Song Lan’s shin and maybe bite him a little. 

(He cares. Song Lan is here, standing in the doorway to the shitty bedroom of Xue Yang’s shitty apartment with the peeling paint and the carpet floor that smells vaguely of cat piss and he  _ cares,  _ for him, for the guy who did unspeakable things to him in another time because of some twisted up notions of  _ love,  _ and the thought of it fills Xue Yang with the inescapable desire to tear his own hair out _. _ )

“Fuck,” he mutters, shoulders his way past Song Lan and drops, face down, onto his bed. 

He’s not going to cry. He’s  _ not _ going to cry and have feelings in front of Song Lan, he’s not going to do this, he  _ isn’t. _ But Song Lan is already lowering himself down next to Xue Yang, all proper and collected despite what he looked like five minutes ago, and that is just  _ unfair. _

He touches Xue Yang’s shoulder, concerned.

Xue Yang can’t do this. 

“Fuck you, Song Lan,” he mutters. He wants to feel something other than this vague sense of shame and worry so badly, he wants to touch, and it’s a terrible idea. He is neither drunk nor in mortal peril, so plausible deniability is right out the fucking window when he rises to his knees and fists Song Lan’s t-shirt in his good hand and yanks him in close for a kiss _._ Song Lan’s mouth opens first in shock, then in an urgent response that is almost as frantic as it is enthusiastic. He sucks Xue Yang’s bottom lip between his. He knocks his forehead against Xue Yang’s and it feels real, it feels so fucking _good._

Please, something in the back of Xue Yang’s head says. Please. Please. Please. 

(Please what, he wants to ask, but the answer is there, always: please forgive me, don’t forget me, please touch me, want me, never let me go.) 

“Shit. Come closer,” Xue Yang gasps into Song Lan’s mouth and pulls until they topple over, until Song Lan is on top of him and presses him down into the mattress.  _ Jesus. _ This is the absolute worst idea but Xue Yang can’t stop. He can’t help scrabbling for the hem of Song Lan’s t-shirt and pulling it up and off and putting his hands all over his torso. Can’t help the jerky thrusts of his hips as he grinds up against Song Lan’s thigh either, dick so very hard already. 

His hands splay against the spiderweb of black veins where Song Lan’s heart once was and he digs his nails in.

Song Lan jerks back. Xue Yang hisses at the loss of his weight on top of him. 

_ Wait, _ Song Lan signs.

“Why,” Xue Yang protests, letting his hands drop onto Song Lan’s thighs and squeeze. Song Lan furrows his brows and signs the words for ‘body’ and ‘death’ and ‘fear.” 

“Jesus,” Xue Yang mutters, licking up his pecs and biting the hollow of his throat. “We’ll work it out. This body is good, you’re so hot. Ugh. I want—I want—come on,” he continues, dragging his hands up Song Lan’s to palm his ass, lifting a leg to grind against Song Lan’s dick which is  _ there _ and  _ hard _ and isn’t that just the best thing? “See? You’re good. So good. Touch me, Song Lan, I want—I need—”

_ Sure? _ Song Lan signs and Xue Yang groans, digs his fingers into his own hair and pulls. Hard. 

“What the fuck do you want me to do,  _ beg?” _

Song Lan doesn’t move. Something about that—something about his steady gaze, the flicker of interest in his eyes,  _ Xiao Xingchen’s _ eyes, just does it for Xue Yang in a way nothing else in this world does—his toes curl and he opens his mouth to whisper:

_ “Please.” _

Song Lan doesn’t waste another second. He scratches Xue Yang’s stomach in his haste to divest him of his sweatpants and his boxers. His own jeans are yanked off with impressive speed and he groans as he takes himself in hand, looking down at Xue Yang with something like surprise, like joy. It’s fucking gorgeous.

“Still works, huh,” Xue Yang grins up at him. 

Song Lan hisses and leans down to bite his chin which is somehow gross and very hot at the same time. He dips his hips and rubs against Xue Yang’s dick which is yes,  _ that,  _ shit, yes, Xue Yang thinks, making encouraging noises when Song Lan’s long fingers wrap around them both and  _ tug. _ And again. And again. And  _ again. _ Being touched is fucking fantastic. Being touched is the best.

“Yes,” Xue Yang cries into Song Lan’s collarbone, “yes, yes, fuck, I—” 

Xue Yang wondered before, briefly (okay, maybe not so briefly), about the kind of expression Song Lan would make when he is seconds away from coming. The answer is this: he makes little helpless noises inches away from Xue Yang’s mouth, jaw slack and eyes wide with a kind of bewildered relief that makes Xue Yang feel all sorts of complicated things. 

Song Lan’s hips stutter and Xue Yang can feel something lukewarm and liquid splatter on his stomach, and Song Lan’s hands are suddenly  _ slippery _ and that—that does it. That  _ really _ does it, god. Xue Yang comes with a groan and several panting breaths, spilling onto Song Lan’s hand and his own chest. 

“Holy shit,” Xue Yang drags his good hand across his forehead as Song Lan collapses beside him, “I didn’t know your body could still do that. Holy shit, I really  _ was _ a genius, wasn’t I?”

Song Lan chuckles a little. Xue Yang can feel his breath move the fine hair that curls around his neck. It tickles. He stretches his arm and it bumps into page 97 of Physics year 1—electromagnetism, Xue Yang notes before he flicks the piece of paper off the bed and turns in Song Lan’s arms to press a self-indulgent kiss to his jaw. He smells nice, soap and laundry detergent and a little bit like sweat. Xue Yang licks his neck to taste it. 

It feels like something, this. Weird and tender. The softness creeps around the corners of whatever messy game they play with this second life and Xue Yang isn’t sure whether he  _ wants _ to do tender at all, but this is  _ nice. _

Unexpected. 

Not that Song Lan is a cuddler, no, Xue Yang called that five minutes after they met—rather, that Song Lan would want to share any sort of closeness with  _ him _ of all people after sex, if they had any at all in the first place. 

He was hoping for the sex part. He’d imagined it in vivid detail, in fact. 

Song Lan kissing him softly after, that—well. 

Maybe this is why he lets the last of his guard down in the end. Xue Yang and his big fucking mouth. Post-orgasm Xue Yang is possibly worse than drunk Xue Yang when it comes to blurting out whatever comes to his mind next, second only to Xue Yang on drugs, as it turns out.

“Shit,” Xue Yang says into Song Lan’s mouth, chasing the aftershocks of pleasure, “I wish you still had a tongue.”

Song Lan freezes. 

Xue Yang’s stomach takes a rapid deep-dive toward his feet. 

(Ah, he thinks, watching Song Lan pull back and sit on his heels by the edge of the bed to look back at him, expression twisting into something hurt and disbelieving. We both forgot, hadn’t we?) __

Xue Yang flops back onto the bed and tries really, really hard not to scream. 

“Song Lan—”

(But what could he say? He remembers cutting Song Lan’s tongue out like remembering a bad dream: vivid details and hazy edges, the sense-memory of smoke and slippery flesh and violent hatred all coded into the image. It’s him and it isn’t. He killed Song Lan and he didn't. He killed Xiao Xingchen and he didn’t. But when he looks down at his hands they look the same: smallish, square, skinny fingers. He sees them wrapped around his knees and wrapped around the hilt of Xingchen’s sword. He remembers the feeling of crazy-edged delight as he ruined their lives and his own with them in the process.)

(How can he be this fucking stupid?)

(Idiot.)

_ (Idiot.) _

Xue Yang tries not to think about the implications of Song Lan sitting on his bed, naked. He tries not to think about the conversations they had, the essays from which Song Lan painstakingly removed the funny asides, the doodles, the cursing. The kisses. Xiao Xingchen, blissfully unaware, and Song Lan’s eyes on him whenever Xingchen isn’t looking, following him everywhere without faltering.

Xue Yang thinks he might be sick. Yet part of him—the curled up, abandoned child and loveless man in his heart—still wants to cling to whatever affection he can wring out of his friendship with Song Lan for as long as he lets him because Xue Yang is still  _ Xue Yang:  _ angry and vindictive and doggedly loyal and violent and so very, very lonely. 

Song Lan is here. Song Lan is here looking at him and it’s so deeply, deeply fucked up, Xue Yang can’t even begin to wrap his head around the magnitude of it. All it does is make him feel weird about his nakedness and the drying come on his stomach, choked up and angry and betrayed all at once. 

“Are you completely out of your mind?” he demands. “Are you crazy? What are you  _ doing,  _ Song Lan?” 

God. Xue Yang squeezes his eyes shut so he doesn’t have to look at him, doesn’t have to see the spidery lines webbing out of Song Lan’s eternal, iron heart. 

“Is this some weird, fucked up form of self-harm thing you’re doing? Looking after me?  _ Fucking _ me? Jesus. I  _ killed  _ you. I remember. I was there.”

Song Lan makes a low sound and touches Xue Yang’s shoulder to get his attention. Xue Yang opens his eyes. 

_ How is what you’re doing any different? _ He signs. 

“I—” Xue Yang feels the anger claw itself back up his throat. He swallows. Swallows again.

What the  _ hell, _ what the fuck. He’s in so deep already, what does another truth matter? Why doesn’t he cut his own fucking heart out and present it to Song Lan as is, gore and viscera and all? Xue Yang loves a dramatic scene. It would be very visually satisfying. 

He hates him. He hates him. He hates him  _ so much, _ Song Lan’s big heart and his stupid face and his stubborn kindness and his hurts and edges and the way he looks at Xiao Xingchen. What the fuck is Song Lan doing here, with him? What the fuck is he doing, chasing Xue Yang who can’t fix anything and asks for everything in return, takes yet some more? 

Xue Yang doesn’t know how to process the threat of Song Lan’s forgiveness in the face of everything  _ else. _

“If I were you,” he says slowly, voice quiet, “I’d feel sick just knowing I’m alive.”

Song Lan studies him for a long moment. Then he sighs and drags his hands down his face, shrugging with a small half-smile. 

_ Feeling sick is better than feeling nothing, _ he signs.  _ I wanted to, anyway. With you. _

“To fuck?” Xue Yang scoffs. “Obviously.”

Song Lan rolls his eyes.  _ Feels good. Feels like something, anyway.  _

And that is something Xue Yang understands: in both his lifetimes, chasing the fullness of living mattered more than anything else, to balance out the shit hand the world has dealt him. To make him feel, if not  _ good,  _ then at least something. 

And sex is awesome. Sex is so, so fucking awesome. 

“Are you angry?” he asks. 

Song Lan shakes his head ‘no’, shrugs, then nods ‘yes’ with a frown. 

“I’m angry too,” Xue Yang says. 

They stare at each other then, helpless and naked, curling up in opposite corners of Xue Yang’s shitty bed and it’s absurd. Horrifying. 

“I hate this,” Xue Yang says and scoffs at Song Lan’s uncertain nod in response. He is so fucking hot, it pisses Xue Yang off. The  _ wanting _ that curls into Xue Yang’s stomach and makes his dick twitch is very fucked up and very immediate, and Song Lan notices because of course he does, why wouldn’t he. He’s looking at Xue Yang again, hungry and desolate and intent, like nobody ever looked at him before. 

Fuck it. Xue Yang jerks his chin up and pushes his shoulders back in a way that he knows shows off the arch of his spine, the way his hair spills over his chest. Song Lan blinks, mouth opening ever so slightly with interest and Xue Yang grins through the cold curl of fear and resentment in his stomach to say: 

“Fine. Okay. You want to feel something? You want to be angry? I’ll blow your fucking mind. I’ll make you forget I’m not him. I’ll make you forget your own fucking  _ name.”  _

Xue Yang watches, gratified, as Song Lan’s breathing quickens and his shoulders pull back. His gaze darkens into something hooded and predatory. Xue Yang arches his back and opens his legs. 

_ I never forget, _ Song Lan signs.  _ Not you, either.  _

And  _ that _ is strange and sideways and sweet. Xue Yang doesn’t quite know what to do with it, is a breath too slow to fight back when Song Lan pounces and presses him into the mattress, drags his arms up by the wrists and pushes  _ down _ . The stretch is good. Song Lan’s fingers curling bruises into his skin is  _ better. _

“Come on then,” Xue Yang says with a grin and a snarl, “do it. Make it  _ good,  _ or not, whatever, I—” 

Song Lan pushes one of Xue Yang’s legs to the side with his knee and bites Xue Yang’s bottom lip again, drags his nose up his jawline to his left ear and Xue Yang lets him, lets it go, clutches Song Lan’s shoulders when he snatches the lube off of the upturned cardboard box Xue Yang uses as a bedside table _. _

“Hurry  _ up,” _ Xue Yang grunts as Song Lan pops the cap open, smears some of the lube on Xue Yang’s stomach which is  _ gross,  _ fuck, but then there is a hand that grinds against his half-hard dick and that’s good, that feels like finally going somewhere. Song Lan lifts Xue Yang’s left leg onto his shoulder and pushes the other further to the side. 

The first finger is quickly followed by the second, burning and pulling even with the lube. Xue Yang squirms but Song Lan holds him down with his free hand before he can twitch away and that is  _ hot, _ this reminder of his strength, the single-minded focus in his expression. Song Lan fingers him open like he means it. 

It’s fast. It’s good. Nobody has ever been this good. It would piss Xue Yang off under any other circumstances, but right now he is too exhausted and well-fucked to care.

When Song Lan flips him over, pulls his hips up and pushes into him,  _ finally,  _ it’s deep and fast and relentless. Xue Yang makes short, breathless noises into his pillow while Song Lan bends over him to bite the back of his neck. 

It shouldn’t feel this  _ much, _ not after he came once already. But Xue Yang thinks he might come again just from the sheer, overwhelming volume of everything that is happening. The wordless quiet. The noise Song Lan’s thighs make when they connect with his. The hair that spills around him, obscuring his face and the tears that spill from his eyes onto the mattress. The feel of Song Lan’s hands on his hips and his cock in his ass and the merciless, neverending rhythm of it. 

“Shit. Fuck. Song Lan, I—”

Song Lan grunts and picks up the pace, puts a hand on Xue Yang’s dick and squeezes, rubbing the head with his palm off rhythm and without grace and it’s so good, so  _ good, _ and then Xue Yang is coming again, muffling his cries into the pillow until Song Lan gets a hand on his chest to pull him up and makes him spill his noises into the quiet afternoon. 

He doesn’t stop.

Song Lan doesn’t fucking stop until Xue Yang is sore and twitching and makes vague protesting cries. He doesn’t stop even when Xue Yang is reduced to sobbing. He keeps moving inside him until it  _ hurts. _

“Song Lan,” Xue Yang gasps, rough-voiced and almost begging, “Song Lan, I, please—”

Song Lan abruptly lets him go. Xue Yang twists around in time to see him pull out, put a hand on his cock and jerk himself off in half a dozen quick pulls, breathing heavily as he comes all over Xue Yang’s ass. It’s stupid hot. It’s  _ stupid _ hot. 

“Fuck,” Xue Yang moans when Song Lan is done, when he rolls off of him and flops face down onto the mattress next to him. “This is gonna  _ hurt _ later.”

Song Lan makes a vague noise of acquiescence, but is otherwise disinclined to move. Evidently. 

“I’m gonna have to go and get a towel myself, aren’t I,” Xue Yang grumbles, but doesn’t move to get up either. Instead, he nestles into Song Lan’s side, an experiment of sorts and is simultaneously surprised and weirded out when Song Lan lifts his arm and turns to pull him into his chest. 

“I don’t know about you, but I’m  _ definitely _ feeling like something,” Xue Yang mutters as he shuffles himself comfortably into Song Lan’s—embrace. Because that’s what this  _ is. _ A fucking  _ hug. _ Jesus. 

Would Xue Yang from the other life laugh if he knew? Would he have seen this coming?

“Will you help me out with my library fee, Song Lan,” he adds instead of following that thought any further, almost as an afterthought, and he hears Song Lan’s tired chuckle before Xue Yang does what he does every time after sex: blacks the fuck out and sleeps. 

~

They don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about the sex or Xue Yang crying or a-Qing—Song Lan climbs out of bed an hour after Xue Yang passes out and fetches a towel from his stupid tiny bathroom, washes the mess off Xue Yang without care for his sleepy protests and gets him dressed. 

_ Food, _ he signs when Xue Yang opens his mouth to bitch at him. Any counter arguments are immediately made invalid by the way Xue Yang’s stomach growls right that second. 

“Ugh,” he says, rubbing his eyes and shuffling into the kitchen. “You want leftovers?”

The two of them share take-out stir fry straight from the container, cold. It’s a little slimy but still edible. Xue Yang prattles on about classes and essays. Song Lan chews his noodles in perpetual silence.

Neither of them mention Xingchen. 

Before he leaves though—once they watch a variety show on Xue Yang’s phone and Song Lan makes him stick back each mangled page back into the physics textbook with clear tape—Song Lan turns to Xue Yang, lifts his hands and signs, very slowly:

_ Text him.  _

Xue Yang locks the door after him and fishes his phone out from between his pillows with a sigh. 

  
  
  


Me 22:17

_ > hey _

Xingchen~ 22:43

> hey

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading <3
> 
> yell at [Casey](https://twitter.com/kevinkevinsonnn) and/or [me](https://twitter.com/rynleaf) on the tweets.
> 
> Art by Casey. :>


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